


wait for them to ask (you who you know)

by Taste_of_Bitterness



Series: i don't think it struck you (it chose you) [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 20:35:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8300045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Bitterness/pseuds/Taste_of_Bitterness
Summary: It took another two days for Leonard to finally snap and decide to get his information straight from the source. And since Allen never picked up his calls and immediately blocked the majority of Leonard’s disposable phone numbers, he would have to go back to old methods and lure the Flash in instead. Which, no big deal. Sounded fun, really. Never let it be said that Leonard didn’t know how to take advantage of a situation. He knew how to take a moment and milk it, stretch it out razor-thin and then tug it just a little bit further. Len called it being ingenuitive. Lisa called it being a drama queen.His hostages, however, were probably too busy trying not to shit their pants to call it anything at all. In which Leonard Snart can't keep his nose out of anybody's business and Barry needs a break.





	

Leonard Snart was not quite sure what constituted a _failure_.

 

His heists, after all, were consistently flawless, no hint of DNA left behind. Even with the appearance of the Flash; Leonard had managed to wrangle a name, and a gun, from the Hispanic tech guy, and was now quite aware that the hero was just a nerd who could run fast. Having Allen’s identity saved his criminal activities, and his record of no-hitches heists continued.

 

This heist, though, may be a failure.

 

The hot sting of _shitIfuckedup_ was an unfamiliar feeling that made Leonard grit his teeth and want to freeze over Central City, for good. How was he supposed to plan for this? This was completely out of nowhere, and the sudden change from a rather predictable hero team was incredibly frustrating.

 

Mick suddenly yelled and redirected the flame from his heat gun towards a quickly moving shadow. Leonard narrowed his eyes as he pulled his trigger again, the brilliant shine from the ice erupting from his cold gun almost blinding, aiming as close as he could get to the much quicker, much redder second blur.

 

The Flash had brought a friend. A friend from out of town, to be exact. A fellow vigilante, hero of Starling City, whose obsession with arrows creeped even Leonard out.

 

This wasn’t completely out of left field. Allen had been to Starling City before, the Scarlet Speedster reported to be teaming up with the hooded group of vaguely infamous do-gooders. And the Hood, whoever he was, had been in Central too.

 

Mainly for larger fish, though. Leonard was very confident in his Rogues’ ability to make utter chaos, but Allen and his new buddy were only seen together for situations that had underlying vibes of A.R.G.U.S.

 

Not to mention it was rarely just the two vigilantes. The Hood had two others in leather with an arrow fetish, and the Flash liked to have that flaming guy who made Mick salivate even when only watching security tape footage; basically, whenever they got together, they formed a little league of _justice_ or something.

 

So this? Unprecedented. And Leonard was not a fan of surprises.

 

The Flash was- manageable. He liked to keep everyone alive in his idealistic hero attempt. He also liked to pretend that Leonard was something more than a criminal. Which, he was. A mastermind, an almost-villian; he could go on. Not anything heroic, though, and Allen’s repeated attempts to lure him to the side of good will was amusing, if laughable.

 

The Hood, however, was an unknown. A dark green variable messing up Leonard’s perfectly formulated equation of this museum heist. Whoever he was, he was a killer. Leonard remembered seeing the never ending news broadcasts reporting yet another dead asshole, arrow holes bleeding out money like some dark Robin Hood fairy tale. The Hood hadn’t killed recently, as far as the Starling City police reports knew, but nobody knew _why_ he had suddenly become much more forgiving.

 

He’d also stopped torturing, which Leonard blamed Allen for completely, around the time of a team up.

 

That didn’t mean he stopped hurting criminals though, something Leonard was very aware of as he twitched his gun and redirected the blast to catch an arrow and coat it in ice, watching it fall and shatter to the concrete.

 

The Flash had made the first move, whipping through the museum and dragging Mick and Leonard out just as they had been about to grab the $200,000 painting, depositing them on the street. Only Leonard’s thick parka kept him safe from any scrapes as they had rolled to a stop. Now that street was alight with ice, fire, streaks of lightning, and, to Leonard’s undying frustration, arrows.

 

“Thought you were going to back off if I followed your rules, Scarlet,” Leonard called out, barely loud enough to be heard over the roaring of Mick’s gun.

 

The Flash skidded to a stop. “I never said that,” he said harshly, and Leonard could imagine the scowl on his face. Allen always got needlessly serious in costume.

 

“Oh,” Leonard said, a slow smirk spreading. “My mistake.” He pulled the trigger, and Allen reduced into a blur of color as he darted out of the way of the blast.

 

The pleasure of watching the frozen wave barrel towards the kid was stifled by an arrow whizzing by, scrapping only his silver-splattered hair thanks to pure luck and relatively quick reflexes. Leonard’s scowl was back in full force.

 

“Get your boyfriend under control, _Flash_ ,” Leonard drawled, each word dragging and icicle-laden.

 

Allen slid to another stop, and Leonard could see the gaping of his mouth even from the distance between them. “Wait, how-?” He stuttered out.

 

Leonard’s eyes narrowed once again. Interesting. Mike stopped lighting the night up with bright flames. Even the Hood seemed to fade back into the darkness between streetlights.

 

“Or do you not hold your best bud to the same high expectations of no killing?” He wondered, tilting his head slowly and stretching lips into a false smile.

 

“Shut up, Snart,” Allen snarled.

 

“Oh. I hit a nerve, it seems,” he said, pleased, and yanked his goggles off, letting them dangle against his neck. “Let’s go, Mick. I’ve gotten bored.”

 

Mick and him started backing away, towards the getaway car. The Hood stepped forward into yellow light, his cheekbones becoming harshly pronounced and his fingers flexed over the heavy, advanced-looking bow.

 

“What makes you think we’re letting you go?”

 

Leonard had never heard Starling City’s vigilante’s voice before, but the deep grumble seemed appropriate. A lesser man may be scared off by it, but Leonard knew a different voice like he knew his own, the sharp vowels and sharper fists, and that one fear overwhelmed any minor anxiety that any other voice could create.

 

“Besides the fact you have nothing on me?” Leonard said.

 

“We have armed robbery on you,” the Hood growled out.

 

“Robbery? Doesn’t seem like I stole anything, does it?” Leonard spread his arms wide, displaying the lack of a successful heist. And, God, did that grate on him.

 

“Attempted.”

 

“Debatable,” Leonard said with a smirk. “Either way, pointless. Scarlet over there and I have an...agreement, of sorts.”

 

Oh, he could imagine the look of horror on the Hood’s face as he whipped his head around to look at Allen, who was doing his best to have the Earth swallow him up.

 

“Ask him sometime,” he continued, and fluttered his fingers in farewell.

  
  
  


The door creaked open, and Lisa poked her head in for the fifth time in two hours, her hair falling in soft, dark waves and her red lips scrunched up into a frown.

 

“You’re still on this, Lenny?”

 

He looked up at her, and sighed softly, cracking his fingers quickly before returning them to his keyboard.

 

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

 

Lisa’s concerned gaze heated into a glare. “Don’t play stupid. Mick told me what happened on last week’s heist and I _know_ you. You’re trying to find out who the Hood is.”

 

“Got me,” Leonard shrugged. He refocused on his laptop screen, taking in the articles that analyzed his fighting style. Some sort of mixed Filipino martial arts. Shockingly graceful, if the glimpses from phone footage are to be trusted.

 

“But why, Len?” She flopped down next to him on his bed, spreading her fingers against the gray blanket. “Like, the Flash, okay. You see him, like, all the time. I can see the advantage of knowing who he is,” she said, “even if you still refuse to tell me.”

 

“Man of my word, sis,” Leonard muttered, scrolling.

 

“Sure,” she snorted. “But, anyway, the Hood. Knowing his identity would be cool and stuff, but it’s ultimately useless information.”

 

“No information is useless,” he reminded her, gently.

 

Lisa tended to romanticize the crime life still, despite being at least somewhat involved for the past five years. That’s why her gun was gold, despite the ultimate waste. She was extravagant, and wanted her victims to glitter and shine in a fantasy-way that true corpses never would. She grew crushes on targets, the team Flash tech only the most recent example. She didn’t quite understand the consequences of her actions anymore, and anything not about their father meant she could approach it without any seriousness. Lisa had been through too much. Leonard was inclined to let her make the life they were stuck in as beautiful as possible.

 

“You just say that to excuse being an utter nerd,” Lisa said, closing her eyes and tilting her head to the ceiling, waving his statement away with a careless flip of her hand.

 

Leonard rolled his eyes and clicked to an article analyzing the evolution of the Hood’s arrows.

 

“Something feels off about him,” he finally said. “Him and the Flash. It may be something I can use against Scarlet.”

 

This was true, but not the entire reason. Leonard _was_ , in fact, obsessive, and wanted to understand the root of the partnership between the very different heros. Possibly useful, yes. But also just very, very interesting.

 

“What?” Lisa said. “They’re secretly brothers, separated at birth?”

 

“Hm,” Leonard said, even though that was absolutely ridiculous.

 

“Well,” she said, and rolled to her feet, heels clicking against his hardwood floors. “Hope you find something.”

  
  
  


Leonard very much _did_ find something, actually. It took just over two weeks, at which point even Mick was getting bored of him being holed up in his room. But it was completely worth it, because he found out who the Hood was.

 

From the very beginning, Leonard guessed it would take years to gain the combat skills the Hood has mastered. Such extreme control over his fighting ability demonstrated complete focus, dedication, but also fear. Nobody would go through that much just to become a vigilante due to their anti-corruption beliefs; this was thrust upon the man. That was easy to figure out. The aptitude with the bow revealed the same thing. He was male, white, in his early 20s or late 30s, going by visible skin, muscle mass, and flexibility.

 

He had a team. Leonard had already known that, but through looking at the victim list and how the Hood subdued certain victims, it became obvious that there was some sort of tech on the team as well, not unlike what Ramon did for Team Flash. Going through the victim list further, it became clear that many had a connection to the Queen family, especially early on. The first reported sighting of the Hood was a Queen himself, just back from five years on a deserted island.

 

Once that connection was made, filling in the blanks was fun. Five years on an island with no doubt deadly obstacles around every bush of vegetation? Leonard would become very capable himself. That would explain the green costume, too, if the Hood trained on that island. It would also explain the abnormal attachment to bows and arrows; Leonard doubted there were many guns to access in the middle of the ocean. Queen had been arrested and accused of being the hood before, but an appearance of the green-suited man had let him off. But if Queen had started forming the team a lot earlier than anyone had approximated, perhaps an early member had filled the role.

 

Diggle, probably, Leonard decided as he unearthed more information on Oliver Queen specifically. Diggle was Queen’s bodyguard, the only one who had stuck around longer than a week. In the bodyguard company’s reports it was claimed that Queen didn’t want the protection, that he kept sneaking off. Impressive for a rich boy to outmaneuver several top notch body guards.

 

What sealed the deal was that Queen _knew_ Allen. Knew him, like knew the forensic scientist version. Knew him before he’d even become the Flash, which. Well. Interesting.

 

Leonard dug more into Queen’s past, checking records on his sister, Thea Queen who was likely also Speedy. And, seriously? Using the known childhood nickname as your undercover superhero codename? Impulsive, sentimental, and extremely damning. Like every other vigilante that existed on the shitty planet.

 

In the end, Leonard had accomplished an objectively impressive amount. He’d identified Starling City’s vigilante, and several members on his team. Still, Leonard felt disappointed. He’d learned Allen and Queen’s connection, but that still didn’t fully explain everything. Why the sudden shift in partnership where every single one of the Flash’s nemesis got double-teamed? Was Queen just stopping by for a visit? Were they better friends than it appeared?

  
  
  


It took another two days for Leonard to finally snap and decide to get his information straight from the source. And since Allen never picked up his calls and immediately blocked the majority of Leonard’s disposable phone numbers, he would have to go back to old methods and lure the Flash in instead. Which, no big deal. Sounded fun, really.

 

Never let it be said that Leonard didn’t know how to take advantage of a situation. He knew how to take a moment and milk it, stretch it out razor-thin and then tug it just a little bit further. Len called it being ingenuitive. Lisa called it being a drama queen.

 

His hostages, however, were probably too busy trying not to shit their pants to call it anything at all. He hummed in vague amusement as he perched on the small desk in the middle of the bank, half-written checks abandoned on either side of him. The woman closest to him, short and plump, was outright shivering, gray purse clutched to her heaving chest. The man next to her, also short and also plump, was shining with sweat.

 

The workers were laid out in front of the small desk, Leonard having entered through the back and only having to use a few icy threats to get them to follow. One had pressed the red alert button, but that was all taken into account. In fact, it was part of the plan.

 

Leonard knew the system, and he knew it would take at least five minutes for Central’s police to even get the alert and likely another ten to get there. Allen worked for the cops so he likely got his information from there and would come speeding over. Knowing his speed and the time it would take the alert to travel to the police department, he estimated Allen would arrive about 6 minutes after Leonard entered the bank. It had been 5 minutes and 25 seconds.

 

15 seconds later, the Flash skidded into the bank, glass doors shivering from the velocity of his entrance. Allen looked angry, the muscle twitch in his jaw visible through the thin leather. Several of Leonard’s hostages cried out in relief.

 

“Snart,” Allen said, voice a decibel deeper than Leonard knew it was. He was close enough that Leonard could smell the ozone-like scent that came off of him whenever he ran but too far for Leonard to see whether he was pissed enough to have lightning flashing in his iris. “Another robbery?”

 

“Mm, no,” Leonard said, and smirked. “Don’t think of this as a robbery. More of an...information session.” He leisurely tapped the grip of his cold gun.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Allen’s eyes were starting to flicker among the hostages, like he was calculating how many he could get out before Leonard pulled the trigger and frosted one over. Leonard had already calculated that. Approximately 15. There were 33 hostages. Allen wouldn’t risk that. _Heros_.

 

“It means I have some questions for you.” He slid off the desk and bared his teeth. “I figured out your buddy’s identity.” Leonard paused. “No wonder he expects to be treated like royalty.”

 

Allen stiffened and his body shimmered with a quick vibration. Oh, fascinating. Leonard was getting to him.

 

“Don’t worry,” he continued and stepped closer to Allen. “I don’t plan on sharing the information. It’s leverage, after all. Besides, I keep my promises.”

 

A quick scoff. “Why are you here then?”

 

“Like I said: information. Now that I know who the Hood is, I know where he goes, what he does. And I know he’s been here five times in the past month and there has been almost a red blur a day in Starling.”

 

Allen’s eyes started flickering among the hostages again. He looked less calculating and more like a man with something to hide. His cheeks started turning a dusty pink and, oh. Maybe that’s what was happening.

 

“I don’t have to tell you anything. Let these people go,” Allen said, but his voice had faded back and stuttered a couple times. New theory rapidly forming.

 

“Oh,” Leonard said. A slow smirk spread. “So that’s how it is, hm? Cute.”

 

“What are you trying to imply?” Allen asked, crossing his arms over his chest with a sneer. “Stop wasting my time.”

 

“Your time?” Leonard said, and laughed sharply. “I knew I was a bane on your existence, _Flash_ , but I wasn’t aware I interrupted _date_ night.”

 

“Shut up,” Allen snapped, but his cheeks flushed an even darker red. Small mutters darted between the hostages.

 

“Well.” Leonard straightened and smirked. “Now that I’ve got that _fascinating_ tidbit, I’ll be going.” He turned to the hostages. “I believe you all have some...questions for your hero.”

 

As he passed Allen, he leaned close and said, “Do you vibrate in bed?” And laughed as the Flash disappeared with a burst of light.

**Author's Note:**

> Well this took a while. Also, I had no idea how to use italics in AO3 and lemme tell you, Snart uses italics every time he opens his mouth. So I hope you appreciate the 10 minutes I spent figuring out how to keep my italics in.
> 
> Also, good news, everyone: I'm writing a novel! It'll be out by June next year. Self-publishing but, eh, still publishing. That's the main reason this took so long. First draft was due by early September and I waited until late July to really start writing. Oops.
> 
> Another reason for my lateness is that I've gotten really into Hamilton. Like, extremely. I love history and I love music so this has been a great experience. There's a few low-key Hamilton references in here. None intended! I also wrote a ten page essay on why Laurens and Hamilton were definitely fucking during the Revolution just because. *fans self* Those letters had me swooning. 
> 
> Until next time! Wish me luck on getting into college. Love you all! *blows kisses*


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